Regenerating health not only killed the tension players feel as they advance down a corridor, but it created a sense of invulnerability in the player that's prevalent throughout most games being developed today.

Finite health encouraged a level of trepidation with the player that taught them running haywire and shooting every corner of the screen may not be the best angle of approach. It was a discipline that actively made the player avoid confrontations and propagated a sense of fear and dread as they wondered "can I survive the next skirmish?" It functionally made the player fear the possibility of death.

When Halo popularized regenerating health to compensate for the learning curve in a new input method (yes, young ones, there was a time when dual analog sticks were new and hard to work), developers took that idea to heart and by-and-large changed the gaming landscape.

Something was lost though; you could recklessly (and feasibly) kill 1, 2, 300 enemies while taking bullets but never really suffer any sort of sanction. Player death was reinforcement that a particular tactic wasn't working. It put value on the player doing their best to stay alive and limited the rate at which you could extinguish enemies, which, let's not forget, served as representations of people.

Violence became cartoonish as a side effect. Death meant less, and killing became easier.

Recently, thanks to the advent and proliferation of high definition graphics, players were given a new reason to fear death and violence. Health still regenerated, but gorgeous, near life-like renditions of people gave you a new reason to care. Can you spot the difference between the two images below?

Enhanced graphics have made certain depictions of violence gut-wrenching to watch. Mario's arms thrown up in the air like "Whelp, we'll get 'em next time!" conveys a completely different tone than Lara getting impaled by a spear. The borderline-unbearable portrayal of violence encourages gamers to play cautiously and thoughtfully. I personally had to put the controller down during the river-slide scene in Tomb Raider after my third time failing it. I couldn't stomach the screen of Lara's body going limp and then becoming subject to the water's current.

The discussion about whether IGN didn't make a death montage because she was a woman left me baffled. It shouldn't make you uncomfortable because she's a woman, it should make you uncomfortable because she's a person. She's Lara Croft-- the only one in that game with the ability to change her and her friends situation, ostensibly the most powerful figure in that self-contained universe the developers created for you-- she's going to be fine. Crystal Dynamics wasn't telling a story to her, they were telling a story to you, the gamer, through her.

Caleb baked the cookies perfectly when he said [and I'm paraphrasing him here:] 'the context in which the game was presented made the deaths painful to watch.' It's presented realistically in a desperate setting where the most immediate danger is a person who will do everything he can to kill you. Not a zombie or an alien. Or, y'know, an agitated mushroom.

When games downplay just how atrocious violence is, it trivializes the act. It's impressive to have a 9 K/D ratio in Call of Duty: Ghosts to be sure, but at the same time you get that score because you're killing nine times as many people as you-yourself are killed. They're digital representations, so no one's really hurt, but the lack of gravity that could potentially be imparted on the player is astounding. Taking it seriously isn't a bad thing, or at least having a vague understanding of what you're doing on a representative level most certainly isn't.

To use a film metaphor-- Steven Spielberg directed both Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade as well as Saving Private Ryan. Both are movies with high body counts, but the fact that you never really see the violence the same way makes them completely different tonally. One was pulp-fun about idealisms of good vs. evil, while the other maintained that as a central theme but also depicted the horrors of World War II.

"One of the responsibilities of art is to actually show this is what it looks like when someone gets shot, because it’s really obfuscated...War is about sending pieces of metal very fast at people and tearing them to bits on the most primal level.” - Ken Levine

Ken Levine wants to make his games more violent to accurately portray death and murder as uncomfortable subjects. The risk is when games like BioShock Infinite or Spec Ops: The Line decide to make a statement, will the gamer get it? Will players shudder as they see the most realistic portrayal of something that represents them cut to ribbons by shrapnel, or when the only influence you have is to inflict the same on a realized world? Or will said violence simply be seen as "cool", or "gross", or "gnarly"? Levine is challenging the players the best he can, but it's up to them to realize they're learning something.

A truly "mature" game doesn't trivialize death or killing. It shows why it's a horror; why life is precious and should be valued more than as a statistic on a menu screen.

Please don't think I'm saying violence in video games spurs violence in real life. I don't believe that and I haven't written that. But should violence should be presented so wantonly? Give it weight, give it meaning. Challenge me to not barge in lay waste to everyone I see; give me a reason to care about taking a life or losing one. Give me moral subjectivity that provokes me to make a decision that'll stick with me after I turn off my system. The medium is called video games so there should be fun oozing out of the experience, but taking the subject seriously can become a way to inform the player.

If you played through Spec Ops: The Line thinking it was a "bro-shooter", I'm sorry, but you missed the point only completely and should play it again. If all you gleaned from BioShock Infinite was that it's fun to throw crows at people you missed that point only completely too. There's a depth present in so many games if you have the resolve to ask why a certain thing was so meticulously presented to you but you have to ask it-- why? Keep in mind the game you're playing was once a blank file. Now it's a character, a story, a system of contextualized physics, a world, a universe, a place that only you can affect.